Change of Quilting Course

Over the weekend I started seriously considering making the Stacked Coins quilt from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts. Then on Tuesday, coincidentally, I saw that the Doll Quilt Challenge for March/April is a Chinese Coins quilt. So Tuesday night, while listening to primary results, I pulled out all my fabric scraps. I took anything that was 4 inches or larger and put it in a bin. I rotary cut pieces freehand to 1-4" long, then I sorted the contents of the bin by color. I laid them out in a stack and started chain-piecing them into 2-piece units, then 4 and so on. I trimmed them to about 4" x 24".



On Wednesday, I took these strips to the fabric store to pick out something for the sashing. After looking around for a while I decided that I'd just use some muslin that I already had at home.



On Thursday, I pieced a backing from some of the Peas and Carrots fabric.



As soon as I had the top and backing ready I realized that what I really wanted to do was hand quilt this. It's kind of old-fashioned looking and I thought the hand quilting would really add something special. And I've never hand quilted and this little quilt would be a great practice piece. I went off to work. Then I found out the baby had arrived. No time for hand quilting this time. After spending quite a bit of time staring at this top I can't decide how to machine quilt it. I think it would look great with a meandering or stipple quilting but I don't think I have the skill for that. I'll probably end up just quilting grid lines on it.